The year seems to have started with a bang for many, but it started with a jolt for Swara Bhasker. On the night of January 5, the Bollywood actor was fervently pleading on social media to “go to the North Gate and do what you can in big numbers, to stop the mob attack” on her alma mater, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Her parents live on the campus (her mother, Ira Bhasker, teaches cinema) and were stuck inside as Swara was doing what she could—speaking out.
“I have been a true blue JNU-ite, very much the jhola-kajal-oxidised earring girl and what I am today has been largely shaped in this leafy campus,” she says. Unusual, unpredictable and outspoken. These are the words one would associate with Swara, a rank outsider to the Hindi film industry who made it on her own terms. She is sure of her choices, does not hesitate to voice out her opinions and is comfortable dealing with the aftermath of her opinions.
“That is signature Swara. My ability to call a spade a spade and an idiot,” she says. While most actors her age and of her competence were trying hard to get a role with the Khans and the Kumars, Swara went on to sign up a short film titled Sheer Qorma, in which she plays a homosexual. Earlier, she played a foul-mouthed, feisty orchestra party singer from the volatile town of Arrah in Bihar in the movie Anaarkali of Aarah in 2017. It’s these guts that her detractors and her trolls hate. But Swara remains unfazed and does what she wants to do to become Bollywood’s most persuasive and popular 31-year-old feminist actor.
So when exactly did she start feeling like a star? “Ganesh Chaturthi always plays an important role in showing me my aukaat,” she quips. “A decade ago, I had just entered Bollywood as a Dilliwali. I remember going for a darshan of Lalbaugcha Raja at 10 pm to seek Ganapati’s blessings. The place had serpentine queues that I could not even see him. In a heavy lehenga and overly made-up face, I was disappointed and a hot mess. In 2019, I not only got a VIP darshan, I even had a shoe brand send me a pair of designer footwear to my house the next day after I put up a social media post that my footwear went missing during the darshan.
Same place, same event, but I guess I’ve earned it,” she says with a hint of pride. But when someone hurts this pride, she pounces on her detractors like a wounded lioness. “When I wrote an open letter to Sanjay Leela Bhansali about the depiction of Padmavati in Padmavat, many thought it was a publicity stunt and a meek attempt to go viral or stay in the news. They said the same thing when I also signed up for the self-pleasuring scene in Veere Di Wedding. But when I did a special video for my trolls on Valentine’s Day where I asked them point-blank why they hate so much, that sent out the message loud and clear —that I don’t take bullshit from anyone.” Incidentally, the video garnered 1.5 million views on Instagram TV. Swara says that she has stopped taking the trolls seriously and likes to do what she believes in.
Three years ago, in the midst of her busy schedule, this girl with Telugu roots went ahead and signed up for a Kalaripayattu course in Puducherry. “Or I could just go off on a temple jaunt with my family and friends.”This year the actor, who calls her life an open book, wants to do some groundwork for her favourite cause—building reading rooms and libraries for underprivileged students. “Or maybe I’ll become that crazy cat lady that everyone talks about, with my three cats,” she jokes. Right now, we don’t know what Swara will do. But when she does something, we know it will go viral.